Accessibility and OA Resources – Annotated

Document: Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science

The Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science is a living document created during an EU Open Science conference in April of 2016.

The published report begins with a brief description of Open Science to make the case for the importance of the movement–chiefly, that it can “increase the quality and benefits of science by making it faster, more responsive to societal challenges, more inclusive and more accessible to new users” (p.4)–and sets forth twelve actions which European member states, the EU Commission, and other stakeholders can take to reach full open access of scientific publications in Europe by 2020, and to also make data sharing “the default approach” for publicly-funded research by the same date. (p.5)

The twelve actions are:

change assessment, evaluation, and reward systems in science

facilitate text and data mining of content

improve insight into intellectual property rights and issues such as privacy

create transparency on the costs and conditions of academic communication

introduce FAIR and secure data principles

set up common e-infrastructures

adopt open access principles

stimulate new publishing models for knowledge transfer

stimulate evidence-based research on innovations in open science

develop, implement, monitor and refine open access plans

involve researchers and new users in open science

encourage stakeholders to share expertise and information on open science

The remainder of the document is devoted to in-depth examination of each of these twelve actions, describing which problem or problems each addresses, solutions to those problems, and concrete actions that can be taken. Despite the European focus of the call, many of these actions could easily be adopted on a broader scale.

One of the more interesting set of concrete actions is that put forwards to address text and data mining of published research. Here, the call recommends that the EU Commission propose copyright reforms allowing “the use of [text and data mining] for academic purposes” as well as others. (p.11)